Note to myself: What is my goal in this argument with my wife? Is it to prove that I do more than she realizes and that much of the stuff she does is unnecessary or inefficient? While I want her to understand that, I don't think it will actually help my marriage in any meaningful way. And that is my quandary. If logic and being right aren't helpful, why do I use them when I argue with her? Then what is left? All the fluffy stuff that males don't like: feeling heard and supported, feeling valid and validated in all one does.
Solutions aren't the solution. If I’m a typical male, which I probably am despite not wanting to be, then most males see innumerable ways to make their wife and family and home better. Sometimes these are selfish motivations: if the kids get to bed earlier, I will have more time to myself; if the kids do chores regularly, I will have to do less for them. But many times the motivations are truly about making the life of your wife or kids better. These other motivations may lead to different improvements or just be the other side of the coin with the same improvements. If the kids do chores, they will learn responsibility and be able to handle the increased stress life throws at them; they will grow up and adult (verb) well. Or if my wife changes the ways she structures her day, she will actually have more time to rest and enjoy herself. But in the end, this is all me (males [but there are totally girls who love control and do this too in their own way. Trust me, they are my patients]) trying to play God. We are made in His image, so this makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it is helpful.
And even if I get to play God and all my demands, my edicts, are played out, what then? Will I suddenly be happy? Will life take on a halcyon calm for everyone? A veritable post-nuclear (stepkids and whatnot) family utopia? I doubt it. I doubt it. I doubt it. Sure, the reduced inefficiencies may allow for some more time in the day, but that will get chewed up by the kids, activities, and general busy-ness of life these days. And new moles will pop up asking to be whacked. There is no end. People, efficient or not, rich or poor, always have these problems.
Part of me takes this information and realizes that I can’t change others but can change myself. I can apply solutions to myself. In hearing my wife’s concerns, complaints, and criticisms, I see many areas that I think she wants me to change. So I can start helping with the kids more in certain ways, cleaning more, and doing less for myself. Surely, surely, this will make her happy, or at least appease her. From a woman’s perspective, it seems like what a husband does will never match what the wife does. But I can try to make her feel like I’m getting close, right? Trying and failing is better than not trying at all, right? The whole endeavor might feel Sisyphean, but instead I’d be rolling a giant ball of laundry up the hill just for it to roll back down the hill and flatten me.
But maybe, just maybe, that isn’t what she wants either. Maybe she had frustrations and complaints but doesn’t actually want or expect me to change. Maybe, as a woman, she isn’t digging for a solution where I change or where anything changes. Could it be that she doesn’t feel heard, validated, or supported, and if she did feel these things, things would be better without any behavioral change happening, without Laundry Sisyphus? This sounds both ludicrous and revolutionary. For a husband to make his wife feel heard, validated, and supported, he would have to give up on what he wanted and on his side of the argument, and he would have to encourage and praise and recognize his wife, even when, in his mind, he felt like he shouldn’t be doing any of that and should be fighting the battle for justice, for fairness. But, paradoxically, the battle of logic is destined to be lost. And when logic and fairness and justice are eschewed, are thrown out, the original hoped-for outcome is possible. It will just be in the context of each person in the marriage doing more than they think they should or need to because they are trying to sacrifice for the one they love rather than trying to balance the scales of fairness, of equality.
This is painful to think about, and I hate it. I slide down the slippery slope of imaging my own personal familial dystopia where I work all day then do chores for another eight hours (I look 30 years older than I am in this nightmare) but still am not measuring up to what she says she does each day. But these thoughts aren’t useful or realistic. The pity-party needs to end. All this phrasing and these ideas sound uncomfortably familiar to the Biblical calling to radically give ourselves up, to empty ourselves to Jesus. It sounds so easy on paper or heard from the pulpit. This is humility. And I suck at it.
Postscript: I attempted to get Dall-E 2 to create an image of “the perfect happy family,” and the results were terrifying. When AI take over the world, I don’t think their fake human families will blend in: